Innermost

Choreography: George Céspedes

Music: Alexis de la O

World Premiere: January 2016, Teatro Mella, Havana with Los Hijos del Director

70 min for 7 dancers

Inspired by the terminology arabic nafs, and the struggle and relation between them.

Nafs is an Arabic word occurring in the Quran, literally meaning "self", and has been translated as "psyche", "ego" or "soul". The term is cognate with the Hebrew word nephesh. According to the Sufi philosophies, the nafs in its unrefined state is "the ego", which they consider to be the lowest dimension of a person's inward existence — his animal and satanic nature. Nafs is an important concept in the Islamic tradition, especially within Sufism and the discipline of gnosis (irfan) in Shia Islam.